Neverwinter Producer Talks About How They Handle Feedback

“Feedback Prioritization” doesn’t exactly make for the most scintillating title for a blog post, but it’s what the producer of Neverwinter, Vincent Malley, has gone with today. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at how he and his team handles feedback on the game, from bug reports to simple “I don’t like X” kind of forum posts. Despite popular perception of game developers, they might know what they’re doing.

Both the impact of a report — how many players it affects and how big a deal it is — and its feasability — how easy it is to fix — play into the team’s prioritization. That’s probably how most of us approach and deal problems in our everyday life, so it’s not surprising that game developers would take the same approach.

In terms of receiving reports and feedback, it can sometimes be a simple matter of unclear wording. Sometimes, it’s a more nuanced issue, like the example Malley gives of a player not liking something because it’s too grindy. (In an MMO? I know, I’m shocked too!) But at least something like that gives the team a better idea of how to address an issue, rather than just reporting that “It’s broken” or “It sucks.”

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Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of
experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online
Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.